Romany of the Snows - Gilbert Parker
"You have travelled far. The sun goes down. You build a fire and cook
your meat, and then good tea and the tabac. It is ver' fine. You hear the
loon crying on the water, or the last whistle of the heron up the pass.
The lights in the sky come out and shine through a thin mist--there is
nothing like that mist, it is so fine and soft. Allons. You are sleepy.
You bless the good God. You stretch pine branches, wrap in your blanket,
and lie down to sleep. If it is winter and you have a friend, you lie
close. It is all quiet. As you sleep, something comes. It slides along
the ground on its belly, like a snake. It is a pity if you have not ears
that feel--the whole body as ears. For there is a swift lunge, a
snarl--ah, you should hear it! the thing has you by the throat, and there
is an end!"
The old man had acted all the scenes: a sidelong glance, a little
gesture, a movement of the body, a quick, harsh breath--without emphatic
excitement, yet with a reality and force that fascinated his two
listeners. When he paused, Shon let go a long breath, and Lawless looked
with keen inquiry at their entertainer. This almost unnatural, yet quiet,
intensity had behind it something besides the mere spirit of the
sportsman. Such exhibitions of feeling generally have an unusual personal
interest to give them point and meaning.
"Yes, that's wonderful, Pourcette," he said; "but that's when the puma
has things its own way. How is it when these come off?" He stroked the
soft furs under his hand.
The man laughed, yet without a sound--the inward, stealthy laugh, as from
a knowledge wicked in its very suggestiveness. His eyes ran from Lawless
to Shon, and back again. He put his hand on his mouth, as though for
silence, stole noiselessly over to the wall, took down his gun quietly,
and turned round. Then he spoke softly:
"To kill the puma, you must watch--always watch. You will see his yellow
eyes sometimes in a tree: you must be ready before he springs. You will
hear his breath at night as you pretend to sleep, and you wait till you
see his foot steal out of the shadow--then you have him. From a mountain
wall you watch in the morning, and, when you see him, you follow, and
follow, and do not rest till you have found him. You must never miss
fire, for he has great strength and a mad tooth. But when you have got
him, he is worth all. You cannot eat the grizzly--he is too thick and
coarse; but the puma--well, you had him from the pot to-night. Was he not
good?"
Lawless's brows ran up in surprise. Shon spoke quickly:
"Heaven above!" he burst out. "Was it puma we had betune the teeth? And
what's puma but an almighty cat? Sure, though, it wint as tinder as
pullets, for all that--but I wish you hadn't tould us."
The old man stood leaning on his gun, his chin on his hands, as they
covered the muzzle, his eyes fixed on something in his memory, the vision
of incidents he had lived or seen.
Lawless went over to the fire and relit his pipe. Shon followed him. They
both watched Pourcette. "D'ye think he's mad?" asked Shon in a whisper.
Lawless shook his head: "Mad? No. But there's more in this puma-hunting
than appears. How long has he lived here, did he say?"
"Four years; and, durin' that time, yours and mine are the only white
faces he has seen, except one."
"Except one. Well, whose was the one? That might be interesting. Maybe
there's a story in that."
"Faith, Lawless, there's a story worth the hearin', I'm thinkin', to
every white man in this country. For the three years I was in the mounted
police, I could count a story for all the days o' the calendar--and not
all o' them would make you happy to hear."
Pourcette turned round to them. He seemed to be listening to Shon's
words. Going to the wall, he hung up the rifle; then he came to the fire
and stood holding out his hands to the blaze. He did not look in the
least mad, but like a man who was dominated by some one thought, more or
less weird. Short and slight, and a little bent, but more from habit--the
habit of listening and watching--than from age, his face had a stern kind
of earnestness and loneliness, and nothing at all of insanity.
Presently Lawless went to a corner and from his kit drew forth a flask.
The old man saw, and immediately brought out a wooden cup. There were two
on the shelf, and Shon pointed to the other. Pourcette took no notice.
Shon went over to get it, but Pourcette laid a hand on his arm: "Not
that."
"For ornamint!" said Shon, laughing, and then his eyes were arrested by a
suit of buckskin and a cap of beaver, hanging on the wall. He turned them
over, and then suddenly drew back his hand, for he saw in the back of the
jacket a knife-slit. There was blood also on the buckskin.
"Holy Mary!" he said, and retreated. Lawless had not noticed; he was
pouring out the liquor. He had handed the cup first to Pourcette, who
raised it towards a gun hung above the fireplace, and said something
under his breath.
"A dramatic little fellow," thought Lawless; "the spirit of his
forefathers--a good deal of heart, a little of the poseur."
Then hearing Shon's exclamation, he turned.
"It's an ugly sight," said Shon, pointing to the jacket. They both looked
at Pourcette, expecting him to speak. The old man reached to the coat,
and, turning it so that the cut and the blood were hid, ran his hand down
it caressingly. "Ah, poor Jo! poor Jo Gordineer!" he said; then he came
over once more to the fire, sat down, and held out his hands to the fire,
shaking his head.
"For God's sake, Lawless, give me a drink!" said Shon. Their eyes met,
and there was the same look in the faces of both. When Shon had drunk, he
said: "So, that's what's come to our old friend, Jo: dead--killed or
murdered--"
"Don't speak so loud," said Lawless. "Let us get the story from him
first."
Years before, when Shon M'Gann and Pierre and Lawless had sojourned in
the Pipi Valley, Jo Gordineer had been with them, as stupid and true a
man as ever drew in his buckle in a hungry land, or let it out to munch
corn and oil. When Lawless returned to find Shon and others of his
companions, he had asked for Gordineer. But not Shon nor anyone else
could tell aught of him; he had wandered north to outlying goldfields,
and then had disappeared completely. But there, as it would seem, his
coat and cap hung, and his rifle, dust-covered, kept guard over the fire.
Shon went over to the coat, did as Pourcette had done, and said: "Is it
gone y'are, Jo, wid your slow tongue and your big heart? Wan by wan the
lads are off."
Pourcette, without any warning, began speaking, but in a very quiet tone
at first, as if unconscious of the others:
"Poor Jo Gordineer! Yes, he is gone. He was my friend--so tall, and such
a hunter! We were at the Ding Dong goldfields together. When luck went
bad, I said to him: 'Come, we will go where there is plenty of wild meat,
and a summer more beautiful than in the south.' I did not want to part
from him, for once, when some miner stole my claim, and I fought, he
stood by me. But in some things he was a little child. That was from his
big heart. Well, he would go, he said; and we came away."
He suddenly became silent; and shook his head, and spoke under his
breath.
"Yes," said Lawless quietly, "you went away. What then?"
He looked up quickly, as though just aware of their presence, and
continued:
"Well, the other followed, as I said, and--"
"No, Pourcette," interposed Lawless, "you didn't say. Who was the other
that followed?"
The old man looked at him gravely, and a little severely, and continued:
"As I said, Gawdor followed--he and an Indian. Gawdor thought we were
going for gold, because I had said I knew a place in the north where
there was gold in a river--I know the place, but that is no matter. We
did not go for gold just then. Gawdor hated Jo Gordineer. There was a
half-breed girl. She was fine to look at. She would have gone to
Gordineer if he had beckoned, any time; but he waited--he was very slow,
except with his finger on a gun; he waited too long.
"Gawdor was mad for the girl. He knew why her feet came slow to the door
when he knocked. He would have quarrelled with Jo, if he had dared;
Gordineer was too quick a shot. He would have killed him from behind; but
it was known in the camp that he was no friend of Gordineer, and it was
not safe."
Again Pourcette was silent. Lawless put on his knee a new pipe, filled
with tobacco. The little man took it, lighted it, and smoked on in
silence for a time undisturbed. Shon broke the silence, by a whisper to
Lawless:
"Jo was a quiet man, as patient as a priest; but when his blood came up,
there was trouble in the land. Do you remimber whin--"
Lawless interrupted him and motioned towards Pourcette. The old man,
after a few puffs, held the pipe on his knee, disregarding it. Lawless
silently offered him some more whisky, but he shook his head. Presently,
he again took up the thread:
"Bien, we travelled slow up through the smoky river country, and beyond
into a wild land. We had bully sport as we went. Sometimes I heard shots
far away behind us; but Gordineer said it was my guess, for we saw
nobody. But I had a feeling. Never mind. At last we come to the Peace
River. It was in the early autumn like this, when the land is full of
comfort. What is there like it? Nothing. The mountains have colours like
a girl's eyes; the smell of the trees is sweet like a child's breath, and
the grass feels for the foot and lifts it with a little soft spring. We
said we could live here for ever. We built this house high up, as you
see, first, because it is good to live high--it puts life in the blood;
and, as Gordineer said, it is noble to look far over the world, every
time your house-door is open, or the parchment is down from the window.
We killed wapiti and caribou without number, and cached them for our
food. We caught fish in the river, and made tea out of the brown
berry--it is very good. We had flour, a little, which we had brought with
us, and I went to Fort St. John and got more. Since then, down in the
valley, I have wheat every summer; for the Chinook winds blow across the
mountains and soften the bitter cold.
"Well, for that journey to Fort St. John. When I got back I found Gawdor
with Gordineer. He said he had come north to hunt. His Indian had left,
and he had lost his way. Gordineer believed him. He never lied himself. I
said nothing, but watched. After a time he asked where the gold-field
was. I told him, and he started away--it was about fifty miles to the
north. He went, and on his way back he come here. He say he could not
find the place, and was going south. I know he lied. At this time I saw
that Gordineer was changed. He was slow in the head, and so, when he
began thinking up here, it made him lonely. It is always in a fine land
like this, where game is plenty, and the heart dances for joy in your
throat, and you sit by the fire--that you think of some woman who would
be glad to draw in and tie the strings of the tent-curtain, or fasten the
latch of the door upon you two alone."
Perhaps some memory stirred within the old man, other than that of his
dead comrade, for he sighed, muffled his mouth in his beard, and then
smiled in a distant way at the fire. The pure truth of what he said came
home to Shon M'Gann and Sir Duke Lawless; for both, in days gone by, had
sat at camp-fires in silent plains, and thought upon women from whom they
believed they were parted for ever, yet who were only kept from them for
a time, to give them happier days. They were thinking of these two women
now. They scarcely knew how long they sat there thinking. Time passes
swiftly when thoughts are cheerful, or are only tinged with the soft
melancholy of a brief separation. Memory is man's greatest friend and
worst enemy.
At last the old man continued: "I saw the thing grew on him. He was not
sulky, but he stare much in the fire at night. In the daytime he was
differen'. A hunter thinks only of his sport. Gawdor watched him.
Gordineer's hand was steady; his nerve was all right. I have seen him
stand still till a grizzly come within twice the length of his gun. Then
he would twist his mouth, and fire into the mortal spot. Once we were out
in the Wide Wing pass. We had never had such a day. Gordineer make grand
shots, better than my own; and men have said I can shoot like the
devil--ha! ha!" He chuckled to himself noiselessly, and said in a whisper
"Twenty grizzlies, and fifty pumas!"
Then he rubbed his hands softly on his knees, and spoke aloud again:
"Ici, I was proud of him. We were standing together on a ledge of rock.
Gawdor was not far away. Gawdor was a poor hunter, and I knew he was wild
at Gordineer's great luck.... A splendid bull-wapiti come out on a rock
across the gully. It was a long shot. I did not think Gordineer could
make it; I was not sure that I could--the wind was blowing and the range
was long. But he draw up his gun like lightning, and fire all at once.
The bull dropped clean over the cliff, and tumbled dead upon the rocks
below. It was fine. But, then, Gordineer slung his gun under his arm, and
say: 'That is enough. I am going to the hut.'
"He went away. That night he did not talk. The next morning, when I say,
'We will be off again to the pass,' he shake his head. He would not go.
He would shoot no more, he said. I understood: it was the girl. He was
wide awake at last. Gawdor understanded also. He know that Gordineer
would go to the south--to her.
"I was sorry; but it was no use. Gawdor went with me to the pass. When we
come back, Jo was gone. On a bit of birch-bark he had put where he was
going, and the way he would take. He said he would come back to me--ah,
the brave comrade! Gawdor say nothing, but his looks were black. I had a
feeling. I sat up all night, smoking. I was not afraid, but I know Gawdor
had found the valley of gold, and he might put a knife in me, because to
know of such a thing alone is fine. Just at dawn, he got up and go out.
He did not come back.
"I waited, and at last went to the pass. In the afternoon, just as I was
rounding the corner of a cliff, there was a shot--then another. The first
went by my head; the second caught me along the ribs, but not to great
hurt. Still, I fell from the shock, and lost some blood. It was Gawdor;
he thought he had killed me.
"When I come to myself I bound up the little furrow in the flesh, and
start away. I know that Gawdor would follow Gordineer. I follow him,
knowing the way he must take. I have never forget the next night. I had
to travel hard, and I track him by his fires and other things. When
sunset come, I do not stop. I was in a valley, and I push on. There was a
little moon. At last I saw a light ahead-a camp-fire, I know. I was weak,
and could have dropped; but a dread was on me.
"I come to the fire. I saw a man lying near it. Just as I saw him, he was
trying to rise. But, as he did so, something sprang out of the shadow
upon him, at his throat. I saw him raise his hand, and strike it with a
knife. The thing let go, and then I fire--but only scratched, I think. It
was a puma. It sprang away again, into the darkness. I ran to the man,
and raised him. It was my friend. He looked up at me and shake his head.
He was torn at the throat.... But there was something else--a wound in
the back. He was stooping over the fire when he was stabbed, and he fell.
He saw that it was Gawdor. He had been left for dead, as I was. Nom de
Dieu! just when I come and could have save him, the puma come also. It is
the best men who have such luck. I have seen it often. I used to wonder
they did not curse God."
He crossed himself and mumbled something. Lawless rose, and walked up and
down the room once or twice, pulling at his beard and frowning. His eyes
were wet. Shon kept blowing into his closed hand and blinking at the
fire. Pourcette got up and took down the gun from the chimney. He brushed
off the dust with his coat-sleeve, and fondled it, shaking his head at it
a little. As he began to speak again, Lawless sat down.
"Now I know why they do not curse. Something curses for them. Jo give me
a word for her, and say 'Well, it is all right; but I wish I had killed
the puma.' There was nothing more. . . . I followed Gawdor for days. I
know that he would go and get someone, and go back to the gold. I thought
at last I had missed him; but no. I had made up my mind what to do when I
found him. One night, just as the moon was showing over the hills, I come
upon him. I was quiet as a puma. I have a stout cord in my pocket, and
another about my body. Just as he was stooping over the fire, as
Gordineer did, I sprang upon him, clasping him about the neck, and
bringing him to the ground. He could not get me off. I am small, but I
have a grip. Then, too, I had one hand at his throat. It was no use to
struggle. The cord and a knife were in my teeth. It was a great trick,
but his breath was well gone, and I fastened his hands. It was no use to
struggle. I tied his feet and legs. Then I carried him to a tree and
bound him tight. I unfastened his hands again and tied them round the
tree. Then I built a great fire not far away. He begged at first and
cried. But I was hard. He got wild, and at last when I leave him he
cursed! It was like nothing I ever heard. He was a devil. . . I come back
after I have carry the message to the poor girl--it is a sad thing to see
the first great grief of the young! Gawdor was not there. The pumas and
others had been with him.
"There was more to do. I wanted to kill that puma which set its teeth in
the throat of my friend. I hunted the woods where it had happened,
beating everywhere, thinking that, perhaps, it was dead. There was not
much blood on the leaves, so I guessed that it had not died. I hunted
from that spot, and killed many--many. I saw that they began to move
north. At last I got back here. From here I have hunted and killed them
slow; but never that one with a wound in the shoulder from Jo's knife.
Still, I can wait. There is nothing like patience for the hunter and for
the man who would have blood for blood."
He paused, and Lawless spoke. "And when you have killed that puma,
Pourcette--if you ever do-what then?"
Pourcette fondled the gun, then rose and hung it up again before he
replied.
"Then I will go to Fort St. John, to the girl--she is there with her
father--and sell all the skins to the factor, and give her the money." He
waved his hand round the room. "There are many skins here, but I have
more cached not far away. Once a year I go to the Fort for flour and
bullets. A dog-team and a bois-brule bring them, and then I am alone as
before. When all that is done I will come back."
"And then, Pourcette?" said Shon.
"Then I will hang that one skin over the chimney where his gun is--and go
out and kill more pumas. What else can one do? When I stop killing I
shall be killed. A million pumas and their skins are not worth the life
of my friend."
Lawless looked round the room, at the wooden cup, the gun, the
bloodstained clothes on the wall, and the skins. He got up, came over,
and touched Pourcette on the shoulder.
"Little man," he said, "give it up, and come with me. Come to Fort St.
John, sell the skins, give the money to the girl, and then let us travel
to the Barren Grounds together, and from there to the south country
again. You will go mad up here. You have killed enough--Gawdor and many
pumas. If Jo could speak, he would say, Give it up. I knew Jo. He was my
good friend before he was yours--mine and M'Gann's here--and we searched
for him to travel with us. He would have done so, I think, for we had
sport and trouble of one kind and another together. And he would have
asked you to come also. Well, do so, little man. We haven't told you our
names. I am Sir Duke Lawless, and this is Shon M'Gann."
Pourcette nodded: "I do not know how it come to me, but I was sure from
the first you are his friends. He speak often of you and of two
others--where are they?"
Lawless replied, and, at the name of Pretty Pierre, Shon hid his forehead
in his hand, in a troubled way. "And you will come with us," said
Lawless, "away from this loneliness?"
"It is not lonely," was the reply. "To hear the thrum of the pigeon, the
whistle of the hawk, the chatter of the black squirrel, and the long cry
of the eagle, is not lonely. Then, there is the river and the pines--all
music; and for what the eye sees, God has been good; and to kill pumas is
my joy. . . . So, I cannot go. These hills are mine. Few strangers come,
and none stop but me. Still, to-morrow or any day, I will show you the
way to the valley where the gold is. Perhaps riches is there, perhaps
not, you shall find."
Lawless saw that it was no use to press the matter. The old man had but
one idea, and nothing could ever change it. Solitude fixes our hearts
immovably on things--call it madness, what you will. In busy life we have
no real or lasting dreams, no ideals. We have to go to the primeval hills
and the wild plains for them. When we leave the hills and the plains, we
lose them again. Shon was, however, for the valley of gold. He was a poor
man, and it would be a joyful thing for him if one day he could empty
ample gold into his wife's lap. Lawless was not greedy, but he and good
gold were not at variance.
"See," said Shon, "the valley's the thing. We can hunt as we go, and if
there's gold for the scrapin', why, there y'are--fill up and come again.
If not, divil the harm done. So here's thumbs up to go, say I. But I
wish, Lawless, I wish that I'd niver known how Jo wint off, an' I wish we
were all t'gither agin, as down in the Pipi Valley."
"There's nothing stands in this world, Shon, but the faith of comrades
and the truth of good women. The rest hangs by a hair. I'll go to the
valley with you. It's many a day since I washed my luck in a gold-pan."
"I will take you there," said Pourcette, suddenly rising, and, with shy
abrupt motions grasping their hands and immediately letting them go
again. "I will take you to-morrow." Then he spread skins upon the floor,
put wood upon the fire, and the three were soon asleep.
The next morning, just as the sun came laboriously over the white peak of
a mountain, and looked down into the great gulch beneath the hut, the
three started. For many hours they crept along the side of the mountain,
then came slowly down upon pine-crested hills, and over to where a small
plain stretched out. It was Pourcette's little farm. Its position was
such that it caught the sun always, and was protected from the north and
east winds. Tall shafts of Indian corn with their yellow tassels were
still standing, and the stubble of the field where the sickle had been
showed in the distance like a carpet of gold. It seemed strange to
Lawless that this old man beside him should be thus peaceful in his
habits, the most primitive and arcadian of farmers, and yet one whose
trade was blood--whose one purpose in life was destruction and vengeance.
They pushed on. Towards the end of the day they came upon a little herd
of caribou, and had excellent sport. Lawless noticed that Pourcette
seemed scarcely to take any aim at all, so swift and decisive was his
handling of the gun. They skinned the deer and cached them, and took up
the journey again. For four days they travelled and hunted alternately.
Pourcette had shot two mountain lions, but they had seen no pumas.
On the morning of the fifth day they came upon the valley where the gold
was. There was no doubt about it. A beautiful little stream ran through
it, and its bed was sprinkled with gold--a goodly sight to a poor man
like Shon, interesting enough to Lawless. For days, while Lawless and
Pourcette hunted, Shon laboured like a galley-slave, making the little
specks into piles, and now and again crowning a pile with a nugget. The
fever of the hunter had passed from him, and another fever was on him.
The others urged him to come away. The winter would soon be hard on them;
he must go, and he and Lawless would return in the spring.
Prevailing on him at last, they started back to Clear Mountain. The first
day Shon was abstracted. He carried the gold he had gathered in a bag
wound about his body. It was heavy, and he could not travel fast. One
morning, Pourcette, who had been off in the hills, came to say that he
had sighted a little herd of wapiti. Shon had fallen and sprained his arm
the evening before (gold is heavy to carry), and he did not go with the
others. He stayed and dreamed of his good fortune, and of his home. In
the late afternoon he lay down in the sun beside the camp-fire and fell
asleep from much thinking. Lawless and Pourcette had little success. The
herd had gone before they arrived. They beat the hills, and turned back
to camp at last, without fret, like good sportsmen. At a point they
separated, to come down upon the camp at different angles, in the hope of
still getting a shot. The camp lay exposed upon a platform of the
mountain.
Lawless came out upon a ledge of rock opposite the camp, a gulch lying
between. He looked across. He was in the shadow, the other wall of the
gulch was in the sun. The air was incomparably clear and fresh, with an
autumnal freshness. Everything stood out distinct and sharply outlined,
nothing flat or blurred. He saw the camp, and the fire, with the smoke
quivering up in a diffusing blue column, Shon lying beside it. He leaned
upon his rifle musingly. The shadows of the pines were blue and cold, but
the tops of them were burnished with the cordial sun, and a
glacier-field, somehow, took on a rose and violet light, reflected,
maybe, from the soft-complexioned sky. He drew in a long breath of
delight, and widened his line of vision.